How to detect/list rogue computers connected to a WIFI network without access to the Wifi Router interface?

Posted by JJarava on Super User See other posts from Super User or by JJarava
Published on 2012-12-01T09:26:48Z Indexed on 2012/12/01 11:09 UTC
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This is what I believe to be an interesting challenge :)

A relative (that leaves a bit too far to go there in person) is complaining that their WIFI/Internet network performance has gone down abysmally lately. She'd like to know if some of the neighbors are using her wifi network to access the internet but she's not too technically savvy.

I know that the best way to prevent issues would be to change the Router password, but it's a bit of a PITA having to re-configure all wifi devices... and if the uninvited guest broke the password once, they can do it again...

Her wifi router/internet connection is provided by the telco, and remotely managed so she can log-on to their telco account's page and remotely change the router's Wifi password, but doesn't have access to the router status page/config/etc unless she opts out of the telco's remote support and mainteinance service...

So, how could she check if there are guests in the wifi with this restrictions and in the most "point and click way"?

In this case I'd probably use nmap to look for other devices in the network, but I'm not sure if that's the easiest way to do it. I'm not a wifi expert, so I don't know if there are any wifi-scanning utils that can tell us who's talking to the router... Lastly, she's a Windows user as I guess that'll influence the choice of tools available

Any suggestions more than welcome

Regards!

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